This week, Threads puts some serious threats to X, Meta is teaching you tax evasion, we hand you an AI cheat sheet and we will see how we can treat content rigorously as if it was a product.
This week’s press
How to avoid paying the Apple’s in-app tax: 2 weeks ago, we talked about Apple introducing their 30% in-app tax to Facebook and Instagram boosted posts. Following this announcement, Meta said they will pass the tax to the advertisers, leaving many of them baffled. But last week, Meta published this new guide to explain how to avoid paying that tax. The TLDR is don’t boost posts on iOS apps. If you boost posts do it only on desktop and mobile browsers.
Instagram's Threads has triple the number of X downloads: This marks a notable shift from earlier patterns where Threads and X had comparable download rates. Threads' success is attributed to Meta's strategic promotions and its potential to become the leading microblogging platform, challenging X's dominance. Despite this, X's download rates have increased slightly since its rebranding from Twitter. Decentralized alternatives like Mastodon and Bluesky struggle to compete in terms of user downloads and engagement.
Too many new AI releases on social media? Here is a recap of all the major releases: Generative AI is reshaping social media across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X, enhancing content creation and user interaction. With over 5 billion global users, these advancements signal a shift towards more personalized, engaging digital experiences, reflecting the increasing time users spend online. It’s also good to have a quick industry benchmark refresher to get a sense of how AI's role in social media can mark a new era of innovation and personalization.
Tool of the week: HeyGen
HeyGen is an AI-powered video creation platform designed to produce studio-quality videos using AI-generated avatars and voices. It enables users to create personalized, engaging videos for various purposes such as marketing, training, and content creation, making it a valuable tool for businesses and individuals looking to enhance their online presence. With features like video translation, customizable avatars, and a wide range of voices and languages, HeyGen simplifies the video production process, allowing for quick and easy creation of high-quality videos. You can easily mimic accents, use a 10-min video clip and generate thousands of hours of content based on that clip. Check out this example.
Content as a Product
It's easy to fall into the trap of traditional content creation and line up blog posts as if they were the magic solution. However, if your content strategy is solely focused on framed case studies and the “10 must-do to become super-productive” type of blogs, chances are you are just keeping yourself busy and not really impacting your funnel. So let's dive into a more nuanced approach to content creation - and it is very similar to building a product.
Rethinking Content Creation
Content is more than just words on a page. It's about providing value, solving problems, and engaging your audience in a way that resonates. Here's how to broaden your content horizons:
Diversify Your Content Types: Think beyond blog posts. Explore trend reports, calculators, spreadsheet templates, guides, video series, trend reports, Q&As, webinars, podcasts, and interactive polls. Each format offers a unique way to engage your audience and can be distributed only in adequate channels.
Content Ideation:
Identify Audience Challenges: Start by understanding the problems your audience faces in their jobs. This could be anything from manual tasks they dread to information they consistently seek out. Like when you ship a product your content should address an underserved need of your audience. Understanding your audience's needs deeply and creating content that solves their problems beyond those your product is solving — not just content that promotes your product.
Map Your Audience Problems to Your Content: Map out the tasks your audience needs to accomplish and create content that helps them achieve these goals. For each problem find the right type of content and distribution channel to transmit the content.
Your Product is not Everyone’s Everything: Not all your content should directly relate to your product. Branch out to related topics that interest your audience, keeping your product-related content to a thoughtful minimum. Keep only 20 to 40% of your content about your product. Your audience should be problem aware, solution aware, brand aware, and product aware in that order.
Hit a Home Run
Creating impactful content requires strategy and foresight. Here's how to set your content up for success:
Prioritize Content Ideas: Not all content ideas are created equal. Focus on those with the potential to drive significant traffic, generate leads, or offer a unique perspective.
Run a Competitive Analysis: Understand what content your competitors are creating and find ways to do it better.
Use the GACCS Template to Guarantee Your Success: Outline your goals, audience, creative take, and distribution channels before you start creating. This ensures your content is focused and has a clear purpose.
Getting the Most Out of Your Content
Maximizing the reach and impact of your content is crucial. Here are strategies to extend the life and effectiveness of your content:
Repurpose and Redistribute: One piece of content can take on many forms. Break down blog posts into social media snippets, turn webinar content into a series of blog posts, or compile related content into comprehensive guides.
Continuously Update and Expand: Keep your content fresh and relevant by updating it with new information and expanding on topics that resonate with your audience.
Creating a Content Roadmap
A content roadmap shouldn't be a collection of ideas thrown together without consideration for impact, effort, or alignment with marketing goals. A well-constructed roadmap goes even further and includes target audiences, specific goals, and a clear prioritization of content ideas. This approach ensures your efforts are not only efficient but also effective, saving you time in both the production and distribution phases.
To build your roadmap, you need a list of content ideas that span across audience segments, address various problems, and touch on all stages of the buyer's journey.
Perceptions and Brand Tenets: Craft 3-4 core perceptions that define what your brand stands for over the next year. These statements should be unique to your company, guiding your content to tell a cohesive story that reinforces your brand identity. Effective perceptions are reflected in your audience's feedback and drive the thematic direction of your content.
SEO Strategy: Develop a focus keyword list to guide your SEO efforts, including keywords you aim to rank for, their current rank, traffic potential, and relevance. This SEO groundwork is essential for shaping a content strategy that enhances your online visibility and track progress effectively.
Funnel Stages and Content Mapping: Ensure your content covers all funnel stages by mapping out a content inventory. This approach prevents gaps and overlaps, aligning content with specific stages and audience segments. Regularly update and repurpose existing content based on performance analysis, focusing on what works to maximize impact.
From Ideas to Roadmap
Transitioning from a list of ideas to a structured content roadmap requires prioritization and planning.
Detailing Content Ideas: For each content idea, include relevant details such as target audience, distribution channel, intended impact, and associated effort. This information is crucial for prioritizing and scheduling content production.
Prioritization: Initiate your content prioritization by distinguishing between high, medium, and low impact ideas, alongside the estimated effort (high, medium, low) they demand. The ideal targets are high-impact, low-effort content pieces that promise significant traffic or lead generation with minimal resource expenditure. However, don't dismiss content that's high in both impact and effort. Such content can dramatically elevate your brand's presence and audience engagement, despite the greater initial investment.
Strategic Coverage : Achieving a balanced content strategy necessitates spreading your efforts across all stages of the marketing funnel, ensuring each piece of content caters to different audience segments and interests. This involves:
Grouping content ideas by type, audience, and funnel stage.
Prioritizing within these categories to ensure you're covering essential aspects like funnel expansion, audience engagement, and SEO targets.
Regularly reviewing and adjusting your plan to remain agile and responsive to audience feedback and changing market trends.
Conclusion
Content should be approached like products: build well-rounded roadmap around audience underserved needs and write right content to address it. Building a content roadmap is not a one-off task but an ongoing process that evolves with your company’s growth and learning. By investing the time to generate well-thought-out content ideas, prioritize effectively, and align your efforts with strategic goals, you're setting the stage for content that not only resonates with your audience but also drives tangible results. As you refine your approach, remember that the goal is to transform your content strategy from a scattered list of ideas into a coherent, goal-driven roadmap that propels your company forward.